War Analysis

[Ralph Dumain]

My memory is slipping, but I think the media began to change their attitude 
once they realized that the USA was going to lose the war following the Tet 
offensive.  It certainly was not on moral grounds.  Ultimately, opposition 
to the war became more respectable, but I don't remember exactly when.  I'm 
trying to remember when that euphemism for Johnson's lies was 
coined--"Credibility Gap".  However, the networks were still very sensitive 
about criticism of the government and were hardly in favor of dissent.  The 
variety show "The Smothers Brothers" was cancelled solely for political 
reasons, as an act of censorship.

I don't remember much about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, except that 
the USA pulled out of the 1980 Olympics.

I may have something else to say about ideology as a palpable presence 
before returning to the main focus of this list.

At 02:41 PM 3/31/2003 +0530, S.Guhathakurta@indal.co.in wrote:

>Ralph,
>
>It is reassuring to hear that the American media turned against the Vietnam
>war in 1968.
>
>A question:
>
>Don't you think that the Afghanistan war (with USSR) was under reported?
>
>  I remember having read in an article by Lawrence Lischfulz (hope I got the
>spelling right) in Economic & Political Weekly (published from India) that
>the latter was as horrendous as the former  even if one went by the number
>of casualties.
>
>What could have been the reason?
>
>Soumya